Migrant Inventors: Powering Innovation at Home and Abroad

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:09]My name is Marta Praau. I'm an assistant professor of economics at Bone University and I'm also currently a visitor at Stanford Seer Center. And my research examines the effects of immigration on innovation and economic growth to understand the diffusion of knowledge across countries. In my study, I examine how inventors interact with their collaborators and also how their productivity changes when they move across countries. And so, one finding in my research is that migrants tend to see an increase in their productivity when they move across country. But the most striking fact is that actually even their collaborators or their former co-workers who are left behind in the home country also tend to experience an increase in their productivity when one of their co-inventors moves abroad. And the reason for this is that often these migrants continue collaborating with their former co-workers in the home country especially when they are both part of the same multinational company.

[00:01:07]And through this collaboration, the migrants share their knowledge, their new expertise that they have gained in the new innovation ecosystem in their destination country. And this knowledge sharing helps making the former co-workers in the home country more productive. When we're thinking about the effects of migration for sending countries such as the developing economies, but also many European countries that send a lot of inventors to the US is not just a problem of brain drain, but there are more nuances to that. In fact, in my research, I document that the knowledge that the migrants transfer to the home country is one force that can offset part of the negative effect of brain drain on the home country. And what I find in my research is that for example, European countries would be worse off if they were to try to completely shut down the out migration of their inventors, if that were even possible, compared to the current situation where it is true they are facing a brain drain. So they are losing out on the direct contribution of innovation of those people that are leaving the country but at the same time their benefit from the knowledge that is transferred back by those migrants. I also examine the effects of what would happen if the US were to expand their H-1B visa program for high-skilled immigrants. And the key takeaway from my findings is that the effects of this policy are not just about the number of immigrants that are coming to the US but also about their skill levels, their expertise and how they interact with the American workers. And immigrant inventors tend to be very highly skilled, knowledgeable and expert individuals. And this knowledge and expertise also benefit their new American co-workers. And so as a result as a result of these expanding the H1B visa program can be beneficial as these immigrant inventors contribute to the innovative talent pool in the US to the innovative capacity of the economy and ultimately to economic growth. The key takeaway is that u migration and migration policy is not just a zero sum game between sending and receiving countries and between immigrants and native workers. But in fact, when immigrant inventors come to the US, they are not just filling jobs, but they are bringing and producing valuable knowledge and expertise that benefits everyone, including to some extent their home country. And one important uh number to keep in mind is that currently in the US about one out of four of all inventors are immigrants. And these immigrant inventors have contributed to expanding the innovative capacity of the US and establishing the US as one of the technological leaders in the global economy. So policies that reduce high-skilled immigration risk slowing down US innovations in way that are hard to reverse. So the final message is that migration policy is not just about the movement of people across borders but ultimately it's fundamentally about the movement of knowledge as